Do you remember when you used to look forward to
your birthday?
Happy Birthday?
For a while, Getting older was exciting.
Every year made you smarter, faster, bigger and stronger.
You could do more in a day, and as bedtimes
became more LAX, you could do more in a night
too.
Is it 4:00 PM already?
What the happened?
Aging.
That's what happened.
Happy birthday, grandma.
It's better to be over the hill and buried under
it.
Don't like your birthday anymore?
Happy birthday.
No such thing.
Tired of feeling tired all the time and weaker and
smaller and slower?
Cheer up.
We can fix that for you.
This is what if, and here's what would happen if
we stopped aging.
In the past 200 years, the average life expectancy on
Earth has more than doubled.
Today is about 100 and another's birthday.
But despite being able to live longer, we still haven't
figured out a way to stop aging.
The very idea of conquering age sounds impossible, not to
mention unnatural.
But don't act like you wouldn't want that sweet, sweet
victory.
At 25, you're at your physical best.
At 40, your body starts getting weaker.
Does that sound fair to you?
Don't you wish we could look and feel our best
forever?
Some scientists believe that it might one day be possible,
but is it really what you want?
Based on what aging is, it seems that it's only
a matter of time before we're able to slow its
effects, if not stop it completely.
After all, aging is simply a biological process.
It's what happens when your body can no longer keep
up with repairing your weakened and damaged cells.
You'll also have free radicals to deal with.
And no, we're not referring to counterculture leftist youths who
aggravate older people.
Free radicals are unstable atoms that your body naturally produces,
and they've been proven to damage cells.
The resulting cell damage can lead to a range of
diseases that are typically linked to old age.
If we get to an age we really like and
then stop our body from making free radicals, our cellular
and molecular structure wouldn't age as much and that might
just be our ticket to eternal youth.
But while that might sound like good news to you,
ask yourself, is anti aging good for the earth and
all the people on it?
You can imagine how the world would be a much
happier place if we never aged.
Generally speaking, we would have a healthier population.
Fewer people would experience the chronic pain that comes with
old age, and we'd see an end to age-related diseases
like Alzheimer's, dementia and Parkinson's.
Families could expect to pay fewer medical costs, providing the
healthcare system with some much needed relief.
More people might live on to meet their great great
grandchildren and even their great, great great grandchildren.
An ageless world would be a utopia.
You could get so much more out of life, crossing
off all the items on your bucket list without feeling
weak or tired or worrying about how much time you
had left.
Barring other causes of death, like accidents or illnesses, you
might even be able to live forever.
But in what kind of world?
We might stop aging, but we wouldn't stop reproducing.
The world would quickly become a claustrophobic place.
Earth's population would boom and we'd find ourselves increasingly strained
to find enough space for everybody.
And safe and comfortable housing wouldn't be the only problem.
How would we feed everybody?
Our quality of life would become increasingly unaffordable, as a
world without aging would mean a world with fewer retirees.
Newcomers to the workforce would struggle to earn a living,
and this would be made worse by job cuts in
medicine and Funeral services, as well as the cosmetics industry.
To give you an idea of how devastating that would
be, just consider that the United States funeral industry alone
adds approximately $20 billion to the national economy every year.
As individuals, food, shelter, and how to pay for them
would be some of our top concerns.
But how about the planet as a whole?
Earth has a threshold for how many lives it can
support, so if we stopped aging, we'd quickly use up
our world's resources, making the climate crisis so much worse
that we might soon find ourselves wishing we could grow
old just to speed ourselves out of this nightmare.
The thing to remember is that aging and death, while
unpleasant, are natural processes.
Even if we don't like growing old and phasing out,
humanity as a species needs it.
While we grow old, Earth is constantly rejuvenating itself through
evolution.
Every Organism on the planet must one day leave to
make room for new and healthier organisms.
This is how the world has stayed young and fit
for billions of years.
So while you may not like growing old, be proud
of the fact that growing old and phasing out is
part of the bigger process to keep the Earth young
and healthy so that it can continue to support generations
of humans who will get to enjoy life as much
as you have.
Of course, it would be nice to stay young for
a little longer, and there are plenty of scientists who
are researching ways to make it possible.
The SENZ Research Foundation, for example, is working on an
anti aging project called Rejuvenation Biotechnology, which would reverse the
effects of aging without halting the process altogether.
Not good enough?
Still feel like living forever?
Well, we can show you what immortality really looks like,
but that's a story for another What if.